D90 White Balance Preset

[DrSpock]

Just upgraded from the D60 to D90 a week ago and brought it to Pasir Ris park on Sunday to capture some evening scenes but I had so much trouble just trying to capture the natural tone of the scene. When I select WB at Cloudy the scene was 'yellowish' and the skin tone appeared slight reddish. But when I change WB to Auto, everything went slightly greenish and the people look like turning into the HULK

Then I chance upon the White balance Preset and discovered that you can save 5 settings so immediately I played with PRE d-0 set to B1,M1 and the photo can out very different and skin tone more natural. So I named this PRE d-0 as 'natural skin' so that if I want to take photos of ppl I can select this WB PRE d-0.

So my question to all is has anyone mastered these settings already to preset for different scenes to eg, Landscape, Sunset, Night scenes, Portrait, etc etc so that the photos turn out more natural? This is so the rest of us can shorten the learning curve? Really appreciate any help

[luna_sea83]

Shoot in raw

[maubachrabbit]

I think it is better for u to do the BW preset again when u want to take photo in different place, different time. Coz the lighting condition will not be the same. That preset will work for that place, at that time only.

And it does not cost much time to do the preset, ok ?

[DrSpock]

Thanks for making me understand better. I guess there's no short cut in learning photography and I guess it's the processes of capturing that one beautiful scene and the challenge that I'm addicted to now. Cheers!

[kaixiang]

If it is a white balance problem, I usually shoot in RAW and process it afterwards. You can do it using GIMP for free. Otherwise you can consider keeping a grey card in your bag. I remember my D60 has a function to set white balance according to a picture of a grey card. The D90 probably has the same function as well.

[catchlights]

you can use WB tool to do custom WB and save it into preset wb.
But unless you sure the temperature of the lighting will remain consistent, or else it will be useless if you plan save the setting and use it for next time.
for instant, I save a preset WB for my studio lights, so I can reuse them if the lighting set up is the same, so don't have to redo custom WB each session, and able to give the images to my customers right after the session.

hope this help.

[tkbonz]

One trick to correct white balance without any fanciful white card or stuff:

Go to Live View, change your WB to "K" and then adjust the white balance accordingly, as you adjust, you can see the changes on the LCD (cause in liveview mode). So you can choose one that matches using your eye. Then depending if you still want to shoot in liveview mode or what, you can take your shot.

Very good method if you don't intend to shoot raw or be super precise on the white balance.

[JT-Fied]

Originally Posted by tkbonz One trick to correct white balance without any fanciful white card or stuff: Go to Live View, change your WB to "K" and then adjust the white balance accordingly, as you adjust, you can see the changes on the LCD (cause in liveview mode). So you can choose one that matches using your eye. Then depending if you still want to shoot in liveview mode or what, you can take your shot. Very good method if you don't intend to shoot raw or be super precise on the white balance.

damn good method man!! thanks for the tip!

[DrSpock]

Wow, thanks for all the wonderful tips. Looking fwd to the weekend when I can try them out. Cheers

[tkbonz]

Take note that you can save all you want, eg. skin tones in fluorescent lighting in a shop, but if you move to other places, you CAN'T use the same wb setting to get the same skin tones!

On another note, the liveview method is very good only if your lighting is consistent (eg. some event photography) but not when the lighting conditions are always changing.